Best Secondary/Recurring Character

Best Episode

Best Song

Best Season

Hearth's Warming Helper

Fandoms Involved In

Note: Please keep all content and discussion not officially published by Hasbro under the "spoiler" tag, and don't link to or paste leaked assets.
The episode was first announced on Sweden's Nickelodeon (and will air in Denmark and Norway that same day), but will air in Australia in September and the U.S. in October. More to come in the coming weeks.
Title: School Raze, Parts 1 & 2
Air Dates:
Nickelodeon (Sweden, Denmark, Norway):
August 28 (6:25pm EST, Part 1)
August 29 (6:25pm EST, Part 2)
Boomerang (Australia):
September 7 (6:30pm EST, Part 1)
September 8 (6:30pm EST, Part 2)
Disc. Family (U.S.): October 13.
Part 1: 11am EST
Part 2: 11:30am EST
Writers:
Part 1: Nicole Dubuc
Part 2: Josh Haber
Synopsis:
Part 1: When the magic of Equestria mysteriously begins to fail, Twilight leads her friends on a quest for answers, leaving the School of Friendship open to attack from a dangerous mastermind.
Part 2: While Twilight and the rest of the Mane Six try to escape Tartarus, Cozy Glow furthers her plot to take over the School of Friendship with only Twilight's students and the CMC's to stop her!
Extra Note: This is the Season 8 finale!
A user on EQD, Kuco, is planning to stream the event.
Also, from @Jeric:
Video links (SendVid):
Part 1:
Part 2:

Before this month is over, Season 6 will have come to an end for My Little Pony. It's been a long one and we're about to go out in style.
Before I do so, I'm gonna rewatch all 5 Season Finales:
This week, I'll be rewatching both "The Best Night Ever" and "A Canterlot Wedding."
Next week, it will be Magical Mystery Cure and Twilight's Kingdom
And the following week, The Cutie Remark, plus I'm gonna rewatch Star Wars: The Force Awakens just for fun.
Also, each rewatch of a season finale episode will be followed by a selected episode of STar Wars: The Clone Wars. Why? Because I still enjoyed that series.
Anyway, I'm off to go rewatch "The Best Night Ever" on Netflix followed by the Star Wars:The CLone Wars episode "Ambush."

A Discovery Family press release just revealed the plot for the Season 6 finale. I don't know about any of you, but I'm definitely VERY intrigued and excited for this one.
http://www.equestriadaily.com/2016/09/my-little-pony-season-6-to-where-and.html

Well, i know that next year will be a MLP:FIM movie, and i heard somepony talking about season 6, and i heard it will be the last season... i'm not sure if this is true but if it is, how do you think it will be? How do you imagine it? (The movie too)

*Will Contains Spoilers for the first 5 seasons* I heard that Discord's first appearance in the show was originally meant to be the Season 1 Finale, but was pushed back to become Season 2's premiere. And that got me thinking there's a pattern: Season 1 Finale: The Official Finale, where the Mane 6 attended the Grand Galloping Gala Season 2 Premiere: Originally meant to be S1 Finale and felt like that as Celestia used the S1 Friendship Reports to help Twilight. Season 2 Finale: Introduced Shining Armor and Princess Cadance in an wedding episode. Season 3 Premiere: Shining Armor and Princess Cadance became the rulers of Crystal Empire Season 3 Finale: Twilight Sparkle became a Alicorn Princess Season 4 Premiere: The new Princess Twilight ended up returning the Elements of Harmony to the Tree of Harmony. Season 4 Finale: Twilight's library home got destroyed, but a new castle was created! Season 5 Premiere: Spoiler covered, for those who didn't see the Comic Com Sneak Peak The new castle contains a huge, holographic-style map that points the Mane 6 to where they are needed. See the pattern? The premiere of each season (save for season 2) ties to the finale of the previous season. Between Season 2 and 3 is Shining Armor and Princess Cadance's roles Between Season 3 and 4 is Twilight becoming a Princess and between Season 4 and 5 is Twilight's new castle and its role They even said Season 3 Finale was meant to be the first part of a story arc that would be continued in Season 4 Premiere. What do you guys think? Is this pattern intentional? Vote and comment.

NOTE: I have nothing against you Sunset Shimmer lovers and i don't make this blog to spite any of you. I am just posting my opinion here and if we can all act civilized, we can all hug each other at the end.
I know that there is a huge following of Sunset Shimmer, with some people actually wanting her to be in the show. And i ask myself, why? How could you integrate a pony like Sunset Shimmer into the show.
I will flat out say that i think Sunset is a boring character in terms of being in a group. She wouldn't really add up anything to current cast.
In EQG she basically has taken over as the Humane 6's Twilight. The problem with her returning to Equestria would be two-fold. First off it would anger the fans off who were otherwise able to just avoid the existence of EQG if they wanted. And second, because she is just Twilight, she'd offer nothing to the group.
Now, how would she actually interact with the mane 6? There would be no tension at all, since Twilight will reassure them, that she is a changed mare and they where not even there, to know how evil she actually was, because i think Twily barely talks about her. That entire portion of her character (the one they made a song out of) would evaporate because literally no one would or even give a hoof. And if they do try and make them overly suspicious it will just come off as forced And the few that could, Celestia and Twilight, forgave her.
So the mane 6 would instantly accept her. And she doesn't really have any special interactions with the mane 6 in EQG. She'd just be subverted to Twilight 2.0 only with less going for her. She'll be pure dead weight on the group and pretty much most episodes you could write with her could've had Twilight in there instead.
But...
Starlight Glimmer is a pony that would be more interesting. Most people don't see it, but she has alot of things going on. She kidnapped the Mane 6, and tried to brainwash them and then if the finale predictions are true, she literally tried to ruin their entire lives and make them miserable for her own gain. Everyone but Twilight would be Discord tier suspicious and untrusting of her. That could be the basis of some good interaction.
Glimmer has a pretty nuanced personality that has a bit of all the mane 6 in it. She's able to at least appear nice and 'motherly' like Fluttershy, secretly has a bit of an ego like Rainbow Dash, started a cult in the middle of nowhere and works entirely alone so a bit of AJ, was called a 'Fancy Pony' in her Gameloft bio so she may come from a nobile bloodline which is the polar opposite to Rarity, Hates fun and chaos so her and Ponka would butt heads, and of course is analogous to Twilight.
There's a bit more to her than that but you get the point. She has a lot in place to create entire episodes with her interacting with the various mane 6. And has Our Town to deal with.
And have you seen this?
This kind of further makes my wish come true.
Listen, i know you Sunset Shimmer guys love her and i know you would like to see her getting her redemption. But you have to see the bigger picture. Except for that, there is really nothing for her in Equestria.

With season five starting in a few months, we can definitely speculate what our ponies will do throughout the twenty-six-episode escapade more. But one we don't know yet is the season finale. Earlier today, inspired by this topic on Reddit, Sethisto posted this about being okay if season five's finale was simple and similar to The Best Night Ever instead of epic with plenty of stakes like A Canterlot Wedding, Magical Mystery Cure, and Twilight's Kingdom.
With that, I have two questions?
Would you like the season five finale to be simple like TBNE or grand with plenty of stakes like the previous three? If the season five finale is simple akin to TBNE, would you be for it?
I posted in EQD already, but I think I was too abbreviated, so I'll post a newer answer.
Honestly, the simpler finale is something FIM has been basically asking itself for a long time. Following The Best Night Ever, every single season finale has been portrayed as really epic with so much at stake.
A Canterlot Wedding upped the ante with its cliffhanger to conclude Part 1, This Day Aria, the looming threat, and the big brawl between the Mane Six and Chrysalis's army.
Magical Mystery Cure is slice of life with the stakes as high as The Crystal Empire. Twilight's friends' memories and lives were at stake, and the musical aspect thrust forward Twilight's will to persevere and "reward."
Twilight's Kingdom takes the stakes of A Canterlot Wedding and multiplies it by one hundred. Quantitatively, the ultimate "epic" episode.
Now, is it fine for an epic finale? Sure. But usually, they're best in small doses. Yeah, when you have that grand and epic finale, your heart pumps and you anticipate the next move. But when you do it again and again, you run into several problems, like overlooking the pace and putting one character on a pedestal (which we've seen time and time again). But there are two really important issues that occur when making these kinds of finales.
You sacrifice character for the eye candy. One of Friendship Is Magic's cores is character-driven stories. When you write such bombastic scenes, the characterization often takes a back seat in favor of plot and action. More specifically, making the plot center on that epic scene alone. The trap Michael Bay's Transformers falls into. Battles and action are extremely addicting. If you want to see or write something so epic, one pitfall is to try to write something even more epic. Even grander. Even more exciting. And in each of the last three finales, the stakes have climbed up and up. Magical Mystery Cure is slice of life, but it's not a simple, casual episode unlike TBNE or Sisterhooves Social. Unfortunately, the more you up the stakes, the more overwhelming the action. Instead of biting your nails, you're trying not to drain your brain. Trying to beat Twilight's Kingdom's stakes is too much of a good thing and makes the finales feel not only more formulaic than they already are, but also like a ripoff of previous high-octane two-parters altogether. Thus, another so bombastic finale would be detrimental to the show.
All three have fallen into this trap. Each of the last three finales are stake- and/or action-heavy and don't concentrate so much on the quality of the logic and structure. A Canterlot Wedding has already shown its age; its flaws are so open, it's the classic guilty pleasure. The criticisms of Magical Mystery Cure have already been explained in several other threads. Now, even a few months old, Twilight's Kingdom is also showing some age.
Part of what made The Best Night Ever both the best finale and best FIM episode is how opposite it is compared to the other three and does it so much better. It's a very pure slice-of-life episode with absolutely nothing so serious at stake, and AKR et al. ran with it. It had the best pacing of any episode in the show. Each character was in character, three-dimensional, and completely likeable. The subversion of fairytale clichés is absolutely hilarious. By focusing on every single character of the Mane Six (including Spike), it's easily the purest episode of the show. TBNE doesn't the viewer tell Friendship Is Magic. It IS Friendship Is Magic!
Is it the grandest season finale? Not even close. But it doesn't try to be, and DHX was able to make it work so beautifully. In fact, that lack of both serious stakes and reliance on the plot to get to the epic scene helps give The Best Night Ever a very timeless quality. More of that timelessness, the better.

Topic is pretty self-explanatory Today, we saw the official debut of the "Rainbow Power"...erm, power The question is, who pulled it off the best? Here's how they looked, for reference
Rarity
Applejack
Princess Twilight Sparkle (Yeahh...they didn't have a nifty little thing for her )
Fluttershy
Pinkie Pie
Rainbow Dash
So...who wore it best?

Hello everypony! Heres my Bass R'n'B remix of the song "You'll play your part" from the season finale. Hope you guys enjoy! https://pony.fm/tracks/2210-youll-play-your-part-bass-rnbhiphop-remix-by-ricardo-f Dailymotion: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1vhe9l_my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic-you-ll-play-your-part-bass-r-n-b-remix-by-ricardo-f_music

My favorite opener has to be The Return of Harmony. Discord has a entertaining personality, Tom the rock, and YOUR FACE.
I love the canterlot wedding because it has my favorite villain, Queen Chrysalis. I think season 2 was the best so far and it topped the rest pretty good.

So..my favorite TV show is coming to an end next Sunday and after seeing the second to last episode today a I can't say i'm thrilled but I knew it was coming. As a serial killer its only a matter of time before you're caught or you meet your end. This show although extremely dark is probably one of the best scripted serials i've ever seen. The characters have depth with a strong range of emotion..I mean Dexter although a psychopath who kills people is pretty damn charming..I don't think I would have ever known unless I ended up a victim or saw him in the act. How are other fans coping with this ending?

So, in my original thoughts on the finale, I talked about why I felt it was a strong episode. Having since rewatched the episode, however, I have been having some serious second thoughts. There were a number of issues that nagged at me when I watched through it the first time, issues that become much more glaring on rewatches to the point that I can't quite set them aside. It's frustrating because there are a number of things I really like about this episode; the quality of all of the songs is extraordinary and I love every single one. I've had “True True Friend” stuck in my head for days. But I can't ignore these issues.
Before I begin, I want to emphasize that the following post is about the episode as an episode. It is not about whether Alicorn Twilight is a good thing or not, which I continue to believe it is. This also does not take into account production considerations. I am aware that season three had a reduced budget and that this episode was originally written as a series finale, and as a result they chose to make some serious compromises. This is simply about the quality of the episode as it has been presented to us.
The episode has a number of serious flaws when it comes to plotting. A lot of people point to the pacing as a flaw, which it certainly has issues with, but the pacing is only a small part of the story. The actual plot is rather flimsy and contradicts a number of things we've learned in the past, about cutie marks, and about destiny in general.
First, there's the way the episode cold opens into a song. Although it's true this song is followed up on at the end of the episode in a reprise, much like how The Crystal Empire Parts I and II reprised its first song at the end, the song itself is rather meaningless and takes up far too much time for the episode. In order to tell any kind of story, particularly the two stories that this episode is trying to tell within the span of twenty two minutes, a writer must budget time appropriately. A song about how everything is fine doesn't do this. While it sounds nice and definitely has a worthwhile melody to it, it's a huge time waster and should have been cut entirely. (Even the animators had a hard time doing much with this song; that's probably why Twilight jumps up onto a table and dances because there was nothing else for her to do with it.)
From there, we segue into trying to handle the crisis with cutie marks, far too fast. The cutie marks themselves have never been about a set destiny. This has been stated by every single episode to ever deal with cutie marks. And yet here it's contradicted. Now, in my previous review I expressed a belief that the spell affected the memories of the Mane Six, which it did appear to do, so it made them think they're supposed to follow a new destiny even though that doesn't make much sense. And it's fraught with its own problems, since it doesn't explain why everyone else in Ponyville is okay with the change.
In fact the whole plot constantly contradicts itself throughout because it can't work the way it does. No one in Ponyville tries to say that the Mane Six are doing things wrong. There's a whole weather team that should have been objecting to Rarity's spellwork, for instance. Angel wasn't protesting the sudden lack of Fluttershy. The Cakes were nowhere to be found, and Applejack's family didn't even appear when Pinkie was mismanaging the farm. And so on and so forth. So, this should mean the spell affected everyone elses' minds to make them think everything was actually fine, yes?
Well, no, it couldn't have because we later see Applejack's family helping her regain her actual cutie mark.
As we progress through the episode, from “What My Cutie Mark Is Telling Me,” the plot accelerates trying to deal with everything at a super blinding speed; this is where people point to the episode having issues with pacing. We also only learn about what caused the cutie mark switch-up at this point, after which we spend more time wasted in the episode with the song “I've Got To Find A Way,” which not only presents us with Twilight becoming depressed without giving us any chance to actually accept it before the plot zooms to the next event, but it also presents some incredibly difficult to believe montage animation throughout. I'm sorry, but I cannot accept that the Mane Six are the only things keeping Ponyville working. I can't accept that the rest of the weather team wouldn't boot Rarity off or that some higher authority than the weather team of Ponyville—say, the weather teams of Cloudsdale or another major city—wouldn't come in and stop what she's doing. I can't accept that Pinkie is so bad at managing a farm that she utterly destroys it within a day, nor can I accept that the rest of Applejack's family would just let her or be that incapable of managing the farm. I can't accept that Rainbow Dash is so unable to care for animals that she can't even conceive of feeding them. I can't accept that Pinkie's entertainment is the only thing keeping everyone in Ponyville from turning against each other.
I just can't accept any of that. It's too absurd.
After Twilight's depression is over in a split second, she figures out how to fix the problem, gathers everyone up, and another song montage proceeds with the Mane Six being restored. Problem created, conceived, and solved in about ten minutes, some of which wasn't even spent establishing the problem to begin with.
Again I'd like to stop here and point out that I love these songs. They're absolutely great music. But they just present so many problems with this episode in terms of telling the story. Specifically, the songs are misused. If I might borrow from something a friend of mine once told me, the songs in this show are typically used for two things:
1. Establishing characterization
2. Covering story that would otherwise be tedious to cover in normal dialogue sequences
Examples of the first include “Smile Smile Smile” while examples of the second would include “Art of the Dress”(which is actually both the first and second) as well as “At The Gala.”
What makes the songs in “Magical Mystery Cure” misused is that they're not just covering plot elements, but zipping past and outright skipping super important parts of the plot. They also fill time that could have been better used for other things.
For example, instead of revealing that Twilight received Starswirl's book only after we see the cutie marks have switched, why not open with her discovering the book and casting a spell, only for it to do seemingly nothing? It'd be a more effective use of time than a song that, while great to listen to, was ultimately meaningless.
After solving the problem with the cutie marks, we cut to Twilight finishing out the spell in Starswirl's book, which for whatever reason causes the Elements of Harmony to blast her. I still can't quite understand why this happens. We're told that it's because Twilight has a destiny to become an Alicorn, but why would that cause the Elements to blast her to a celestial realm? It feels as though this only happens because the plot requires it. I can try to explain this by suggesting that the Elements of Harmony are part of some natural magic of Equestria, that they detect that Twilight has created her own magic and so that means she needs to become an Alicorn.
Alternatively, the fact that she's blasted into seeming dust and then ends up in a celestial realm could possibly be a kid friendly way of saying the Elements killed her and that she had to be resurrected as an Alicorn.
Whatever the case we barely get a chance to understand what's happening before Celestia tells us all about this in a song that tells us it's all about Twilight's destiny. Again I take issue with the destiny aspect because it suggests that her becoming an Alicorn was something pre-determined, that she only went through motions Fate dictated to her and that it's not her effort that resulted in her earning the position and the title of Princess.
It also significantly muddles where Alicorns come from because we don't know if Cadance went through something like this, or if Celestia and Luna did, and if they did why are they so much larger than Twilight. It presents further confusing issues.
Then we have the sequence where Celestia explains to the others what's happened. This would have been a great time, if the episode were a two parter, for the Mane Six to have experienced some significant angst. It's nighttime when Twilight Ascends, so they've spent several hours sitting there. For all they know, they'd killed one of their best friends; all that was left behind was smoking ash in the shape of Twilight's cutie mark. But alas, missed opportunities.
I take strong issue with how Celestia phrases things. She says, “I'll still be here to help and guide you, but we're all your students now, too.” Student of what? Of knowledge? Of friendship? We don't get an answer, and the way it's phrased makes things almost as confusing as possible.
After that, the rest of the episode concerns itself with feel good imagery and songs that can be summed as “Twilight is a Princess; yay!” It's full of some fantastic animation, and I do love the outfits the Mane Six end up wearing. There's also a few good lines, like Shining Armor's “liquid pride” but also some problematic ones, such as the way Twilight's speech to the crowd opens with “A little while ago.” I realize they were trying to avoid setting a specific timeline, but that phrasing makes it seem like she could have ended up in Ponyville just a couple of months before she Ascended, or even just a few weeks.
On the whole, the episode has severe problems with its plot. The pacing is just the most obvious symptom of that; the plot as a whole is contrived and doesn't offer up as much as it could have. The whole episode could have benefited from some significant rewriting. A friend of mine, Norse Pony, offers up here one possible way the episode could have gone differently: http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/129557/spoilers-an-alternate-finale-or-rewriting-friendship
My feelings about the episode are mixed, to sum up. There really is a lot about it that I still like. I love the songs; even the ones that I said should be cut for time are really good. “True True Friend” which has a few issues with the plot glaring in its montage of animation is probably my favorite out of the lot and, as I said at the beginning, has been stuck in my head ever since I first saw the episode. Twilight's Ascension as an Alicorn is something that I believed and continue to believe is something this show needed not only for the future, but also just because I think she deserves it. Twilight Sparkle has been growing as a character throughout the show and it's all been building towards one ultimate goal.
I just take so much issue with how they ended up doing it. They wanted to do a musical episode, because when this episode was written, in November of 2011, they thought this was the end of the show. This episode was more fitting of a series finale than a season finale, and I rather wish that once season four had been ordered they'd been able to go back and axe an episode of season three so they could turn this into a two parter. It would have been nice, but it's not what they were able to do unfortunately.
So my revised score for this episode, taking into account both the fact that I really like parts of it but that the plot is contrived... is 3/10. Compared to most episodes it falls far short of what it's trying to do. My original score of 7/10 was a result of praising the concept it was shooting for rather than what it actually ended up doing.
Still, I do feel like the issues present in this episode aren't likely to be repeated. As has been pointed out by many, season three was underfunded, and it showed in a lot of the writing. They thought this was the end of the series so they were trying to do too many large ideas with what they had, and they stumbled. It's understandable. Season four is likely to open up with a good, strong two parter that will resolve a lot of the unanswered questions from this, and will sell us on Alicorn Twilight far better than Magical Mystery Cure does. I'm still looking forward, with interest and excitement.